Area of Effect: Display Markers

Area of Effect spells

AE's in this game are really anyone's guess as to far how far they will sometimes hit, I think that the Final fantasy staples should be added to remedy this certain issue. Right now your probably wondering what I mean by that, well I'm talking about the good old glyphs.

Currently its just a guessing game on whether or not you will actually hit something with that flare your about to cast or will I hit that mage from here if I sing this song… or will I hit the tank and the melee dps with protect if I cast it from where he is standing? Well Glyphs would and could be the best solution to this issue, I know I know its not the biggest problem in the world but it would seriously increase general playability and it would be very user friendly.

They would definitely help with a lot of abilities especially some important ones like Benediction some would probably not even mind it for Rampart small additions like this would help immensely help a tank find out when would be the best time to hit the melee group with it or where to stand for optimal usage when he's in a swap phase. But I'm also not saying that this is something that has to be as elaborate as some of the glyphs in previous games it could be as small and simple as this one :

One spell that would definitely benefit from something like this would have to be Blizzara, yes it might not be the same in 2.0 but as of 1.xx it sucks butt. Its one of those spells that can hit a mob if your near it but only x distance from where you are which unless you play the class quite often then you might not know how far exactly it would be. This does not mean that you have to do it for every single ability but it could possibly help at least for the Area of effect ones you could always obviously have the option to turn it off because people should have options\.

All in all I really think this would be a great addition to the ease of play for FFXIV: ARR especially for new players from other more main stream MMOs which ever it may be! Or really even old players we don’t know exactly how many new abilities or combos will be added in FFXIVARR we could have combos that turn single target abilities into AE's for all I know.

Thank you for taking the time to read this thread, yours truly Jullias Ondore :3

How would you do this with instant cast spells/abilities? You push the button and the skill goes off so you can't really confirm the radius before using it.

For something like Sacred Prism, they could add a glyph to the animation that shows the radius of the next heal/buff cast. It doesn't have to be something that shows up before you cast. If it's just a quick flash, people will eventually get a sense of how big it the radius is. This sounds like a lot to animate, though. Great idea, but might not be worth the trouble. Maybe for a future class or something.

For something like Sacred Prism, they could add a glyph to the animation that shows the radius of the next heal/buff cast. It doesn't have to be something that shows up before you cast. If it's just a quick flash, people will eventually get a sense of how big it the radius is. This sounds like a lot to animate, though. Great idea, but might not be worth the trouble. Maybe for a future class or something.

Actually this made me consider it more and rather than a circle or even a glyph, the spell effects themselves should really represent the spells area of effect.

Right now a spell effect is just copied onto whatever model it actually effects. This should change where the effective area is the bulk of the effect then anything affected by it could say have a simple particle effect or such applied to it. Examples:

Rampart: Shield effect animation played as a dome around the caster using the radius of spells effect rather than the size of the casting model. Anyone that actually gains the effect just gets a quick little upward sparkle effect that plays on their models.

Protect: Similar concept as above. Rather than create the effect ring around each person, the effect ring is expanded out to its actual effect area. Everyone effected gets a simple sparkle effect again.

Fire: Rather than a bunch of little explosions on each effect target, move to one big explosion that has a radius of its effect. Then anything hit by it has a simple heatwave/smoke effect rise from their model to indicate they were effected.

Then from there people would be able to quickly memorize the effect area for the skills/effect visually and maintain a very good immersion factor. From a technical standpoint it would also likely reduce rendering requirements in large crowds as well.